On average, we spend 40 hours at work every week. That considered, feeling comfortable and productive at work is important. Therefore, businesses must continuously consider whether the workplace design is in balance with the organizational demands for future outcomes and work processes. It might be the right time to ask: is the office space hindering rather than promoting the strategies of the organization?

Employee productivity is one of the most critical business metrics to measure when evaluating the efficiency of your business. Routines and bad habits comprise the biggest threat for this metric to thrive.

To foster employee productivity and performance, businesses need to adopt workplace strategies that can help them minimize the threat of bad habits, and help them drive the desired behaviour and behavioural change.

Today Facility Managers and their subsequent organizations are faced with managing a more technologically savvy and diverse workforce.

Trying to transform the workplace in conjunction with the evolution of the labor force has left workplace professionals with a whole new set of questions around the role of the built environment: What is the function of the office when a big part of the workforce now works remotely? And how can we use the workplace to drive a desired behavioral and cultural change?

To succeed in your role as a Workplace Experience Manager, in-depth knowledge of the end-users, their workplace experience perceptions and their behavior patterns is required. From our experience, gaining these insights through a combination of quantitative User Experience Surveys and in-depth focus group interviews is a golden opportunity. Not only to understand the people and the company you’re dealing with – but to focus on optimizing the experiences that make the single biggest impact.

Decreasing transportation costs, improved infrastructure along with new media and communication technologies have increased the opportunity to connect with anyone from anywhere to exchange knowledge, explore new cultures and discover new business opportunities.

In many instances, globalization has unquestionably made us more alike; just as it has made us more aware of local differences. Differences that multinational companies try to navigate through, understand and in many cases adapt to.

The increasing pace of globalization, combined with huge advances in technology, will be forcing a paradigm shift in facilities management in the coming years. This article outlines the 3 main challenges, every facility manager needs to be prepared for.

The way we inhabit our workspace is changing and so are the workplace strategies we must have in place to attract and retain talent as well as to drive productivity and performance. Here are 7 ways facility managers must fulfill their customer needs and innovate their practices to stay competitive in the facility management industry by 2020.

Collaboration makes up one of the most important value-adding activities in the workplace today. Yet companies continue to struggle with developing workspaces that support this value-added interaction. In fact, many contemporary workplaces have a physical layout that makes it impossible for people to cooperate. Long linear hallways, several floors and private office rooms make up some of the biggest barriers for interaction.

Research demonstrates that more than 50 meters between people eliminates any hope of communication and collaboration between them (“Allen-effect”). So even though employees are aware of qualified project- collaboration partners within the organization – the distant location discourages them in reaching out.

Corporate Real Estate and Facility Management executives today are challenged with, at one hand: reduce their asset and operational costs while on the other; enhance the work experience. If used right, new technologies and cognitive devices can enable workplace professionals to solve these diverging needs, while maximizing business competitiveness and productivity.

The role of the Facility Manager in the workplace is evolving at a tremendous pace. But what does it take to be a successful Facility Manager? Here are the key traits we have observed during our many years of Facility Management operations at ISS.

No high-performing company would contest that some of the most important aspects of workplace management is to create and enhance an environment that has the power to attract, engage and retain employees.

Most would also agree that great leadership cannot do this alone. Companies need facilities that reinforce a company’s vision and mission, services as well as support systems that reflect the employee-centric leadership goals. In that regard, a Facility Manager is irreplaceable.

To handle such tasks, and do it well, here are some of the traits and characteristics of a Facility Manager you need to be on outlook for.

Led by a growing skills shortage, advancing technologies, generational shifts, and evolving dynamics around the nature of work, today’s pursuit for talent has never been more competitive.

To ride the wave, executives must take charge of how they attract, develop, and retain their organization’s talent. To succeed with that mission takes more than traditional benefits. It requires a dedication to building a strong and healthy company culture and a workplace that is happy and fun to be part of. Welcome a Workplace Experience Manager.

About Service Futures

Service Futures represents the most important visions, trends and insights for the future of service, facility management, the workplace as an experience, HRM and outsourcing.

Across all our topics, we have one single goal; to enrich our readers with ideas and thoughts that help them become more courageous and creative in their work now and in the future. We do this based on thorough industry research, theory, practice and by engaging the foremost experts to express their visions and thoughts in the most influential way possible.